The issue still happens there, so it does not appear to be caused by themes or client-side plugin customizations. There are no whispers in any topic, so it’s likely not that either.
I also cannot use Dismiss, because there is no Dismiss button on /unread when the unread list is empty.
Expected behaviour
If the nav says Unread (14), I should see 14 unread Topics on /unread, or at least some visible unread Topics.
have you changed any category permissions recently or moved some topics to a secure category? something has changed the tracking state.
wouldn’t you want to reset it for all users if others are having the same issue?
i think this can be fixed for everyone via rails console but it’s a bit tricky and i have to figure it out and test it first. i am on mobile at the moment but i’ll try to post a solution in a bit if no one else does.
Yes. In private our staff worked on a category similar to Documentation, which was recently made public once it was finished.
Yes, yes indeed. My idea was to test it on myself first, and then fix for everyone. Since it’s such a complicated bug to test (at least for me), I didn’t want to get everyone’s hopes up until there’s a working solution.
Thank you for the confidence. This morning I noticed the May 2026 monthly releasev2026.05, and thought it might fix the issue, but it still persists. I’m sure the Team is on it. Discourse is awesome.
Oh, gosh. Admitedly I’ve gone through read all the realted bug reports. For a hot minute, I even considered just hiding the “Unread” tab from the navigation, and just ignoring it. But that’s not going to solve anything, is it. Looks like it’s even following me around here on Meta.
ok, this rails script will act as a global “mark all as read” and force the unread count back to 0 for all users, so unfortunately it will clear any legitimate unread counts in addition to any phantom unreads. we can do this with a sql command in rails. but note that it doesn’t fix the root bug. also, good idea if you have a recent backup handy, but i tested this on my dev forum and it worked.
cd /var/discourse ./launcher enter app rails c
paste the whole folowing block and hit enter
sql = <<~SQL
UPDATE topic_users
SET last_read_post_number = topics.highest_post_number
FROM topics
WHERE topics.id = topic_users.topic_id
AND COALESCE(topic_users.last_read_post_number, 0) < topics.highest_post_number
AND topic_users.notification_level IN (2, 3, 4) -- Tracking, Watching, Watching First Post
SQL
# run the update
result = ActiveRecord::Base.connection.execute(sql)
puts "Successfully cleared #{result.cmd_tuples} unread topics site-wide."
# force client browsers to drop their cached state and sync with the database
MessageBus.publish("/topic-tracking-state", { clear: true })
users may have to hard refresh to see the cleared unread state.
Admitedly I’ve gone through read all the realted